Document Type : .

Authors

• masood khoshtinat ¹
• amir mohebian ²
• mahdi najafiafra ³

¹ PhD student Department of Philosophy, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

² Assistant Professor Department of Philosophy, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran, . (Corresponding Author),

³ Professor Department of Philosophy, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Since the beginning of his life, man has been looking for a reason for the origin of existence, and this issue has provided the basis for discussion among thinkers. Antony Flew is one of the thinkers who, based on evidentialism and following the analysis of religious worldview, first turns to atheism and then to deism. According to his approach, Flew sought scientific and experimental evidence for his beliefs, which by resorting to this approach and its arrangement in the form of teleological argument, finally leads to deism that the analysis of these evidences is the subject of this article. As a result, it will become clear that these scientific and empirical reasons can be useful evidence for deism to some extent, but the nature of science is the lack of stability, and transformation, which is considered an important weakness for epistemological matters. Also, although Flew does not go beyond deism by appealing to them, he refers to God's intervention in nature after creation, which indicates the lack of sufficient coherence of his thought after the change of belief. Finally, it should be said that considering his deism, his belief in practice is not much different from his atheism.

Keywords

• Deism
• Theism
• Atheism
• Antony Flew
• Teleological argument